Map of Bones: A Sigma Force Novel Page 36

  “Professore!” Raoul called, closing the door behind them.

  Through a back door leading to other private rooms, Dr. Alberto Menardi entered. He wore a black smoking jacket trimmed in crimson. He had the gall to be still wearing his clerical Roman collar above a black shirt.

  He carried a book under one arm and shook a finger at Rachel. “You haven’t been totally honest with us.”

  Rachel felt her heart stop beating, her breath became trapped.

  Alberto turned to Raoul. “And if you hadn’t distracted me with the need to mend that American’s wrist, I would’ve discovered this sooner. Both of you, come here.”

  They were waved to the cluttered desk.

  Rachel noted her map of the Mediterranean spread out on the top. New lines had been added, circles, meridians, degree marks. Tiny arcane numbers were inscribed along one edge of the map. A compass and T square rested beside it, along with a sextant. Plainly, Alberto had been working on this puzzle, either not trusting Rachel or figuring she and her uncle were too obtuse.

  The prefect tapped the map. “Rome is not the next place.”

  Rachel forced herself not to flinch.

  Alberto continued, “All the subtext to this geometric design signifies forward motion in time. Even this hourglass, it segments time, marching forward one grain at a time, to the inevitable end. For this reason, the symbol of the hourglass has always represented death, the end of time. To have an hourglass show up here can only mean one thing.”

  Raoul’s frown deepened, indicating his lack of understanding.

  Alberto sighed. “Obviously, it signifies the end of this journey. I’m sure that wherever this clue points, it marks the last stop.”

  Rachel felt Raoul stir beside her. They were close to their end goal. But they didn’t have the gold key, and for all Alberto’s intelligence, he hadn’t solved the complete riddle yet. But he would.

  “It can’t be Rome,” Alberto said. “That’s moving backward, not forward. There is another mystery to solve here.”

  Rachel shook her head, feigning exhausted disinterest. “That’s all we could calculate before we were attacked.” She waved around his room. “We didn’t have your resources.”

  Alberto studied her as she spoke. She stared, unflinching.

  “I…I believe you,” he said slowly. “Monsignor Vigor is quite sharp, but this riddle is layered in mystery.”

  Rachel kept her features dull, allowing some fear to show, acting cowed. Alberto worked alone. He’d plainly ensconced himself in here to solve the Court’s mysteries. Trusting no one else, conceited in his own superiority. He would not understand the value of the wider perspective, a diversification of viewpoint. It had taken the entire team’s expertise to piece the mystery together, not the work of one man.

  But the prefect was no fool. “Still,” he said, “we should be sure. You kept hidden the discovery of the gold key. Maybe there’s more you kept hidden.”

  Fear edged higher. “I’ve told you everything,” she swore with mustered conviction. Would they believe her? Would they torture her?

  She swallowed hard, trying to hide it. She would never talk. Too much was at stake. She had seen the power displayed in Rome and Alexandria. The Dragon Court must never possess it.

  Even Monk’s life would be forfeit from here. They were both soldiers. Back on the hydrofoil, she had given the information about the gold key not only to spare Monk, but also to engage Gray, to give him a chance to do something. It had seemed a reasonable risk. Like now, the Court had still been missing a vital piece of the puzzle. She had to hold on to the discovery of Avignon and the French papacy.

  Or all would be lost.

  Alberto shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out if you know more. It’s time we ensured the complete truth from you. Take her next door. We should be ready.”

  Rachel’s breathing grew quicker, but she could not seem to get enough air. She was manhandled by Raoul back out the door. Alberto followed, shedding his jacket, ready to get down to work.

  Rachel pictured again Monk’s hand flopping on the ship’s deck. She had to gird herself for worse. They must not know. Not ever. No reason would be good enough for her to reveal the truth.

  As Rachel stepped out into the hall, she saw that the far room, the one that held the strange X-shaped table, was lit up much brighter. Someone had turned on the overhead surgical lamp.

  Raoul partially blocked the view. She spotted an IV bottle on a stand. A tray of long surgical instruments, sharp-edged, corkscrewed, and razor-toothed. A figure was strapped to the table.

  Oh God…Monk…?

  “We can stretch this interrogation all night long,” Alberto promised, stepping past to enter the room first. He crossed and donned a pair of sterile latex gloves.

  Raoul finally dragged her forward into the suite of surgical horrors.

  Rachel finally saw who was strapped to the table, pinioned, limbs stretched and tied, nose already dripping blood.

  “Someone came snooping where they shouldn’t have,” Raoul said with a hungry smile.

  The captive’s face turned toward her. Their eyes met with recognition. And at that moment, all will left her.

  Rachel lunged forward. “No!”

  Raoul grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged Rachel to her knees. “You’ll watch from here.”

  Alberto picked up a silver scalpel. “We’ll start with the left ear.”

  “No!” Rachel screamed. “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything!”

  Alberto lowered the blade and turned to her.

  “Avignon,” she sobbed. “It’s Avignon.”

  She felt no guilt in the telling. She had to trust Gray from here. All hope rested on him. Rachel stared into the terrified eyes of the bound prisoner.

  “Nonna…” Rachel moaned.

  It was her grandmother.

  2:22 A.M.

  AVIGNON, FRANCE

  THE CITY of Avignon glowed, shouted, sang, and danced.

  The annual Summer Theater Festival ran each July, the world’s largest showcase of the music, drama, and art. Youth crowded into the city, camping in parks, flooding hotels and youth hostels. It was an around-the-clock party. Even the lowering skies did not discourage the festival-goers.

  Vigor turned from a couple in full fellatio on a secluded park bench. The woman’s long hair hid most of her effort at pleasuring her male companion. Vigor hurried past with Kat at his side. They had chosen to pass through the high park to reach the Place du Palais, the Palace Square. The pope’s castle sat atop a spur of rock overlooking the river.

  As they passed a lookout spot, a curve of the river appeared below. Jutting out into it was the famous bridge of French nursery rhymes, Le Pont d’Avignon, or St. Benezet Bridge. Built in the late twelfth century, it was the only bridge to span the Rhône River…though after so many centuries, only four of its original twenty-two arches remained. The partial span was lit up brilliantly. Partiers danced atop it, traditional folk dancers from the look of it. Music trailed up to them.

  In Avignon, the past and present mingled as they did in few other cities.

  “Where do we begin?” Kat asked.

  Vigor had spent the flight here in research, trying to answer that exact question. He spoke as he led them away from the river and toward the city. “Avignon is one of the oldest townships of Europe. It can trace its roots back to Neolithic times. It was settled by the Celts, then the Romans. But what Avignon is most famous for today is its Gothic heritage, which flourished during the century of the French papacy. Avignon boasts one of the largest ensembles of Gothic architecture in all of Europe. A true Gothic town.”

  “And the significance of that would be what?” Kat asked.

  Vigor recognized the stiffness in her voice. She was worried about her teammates, cut off from them, sent here. He knew she felt a deep-seated responsibility for the capture of his niece and Monk. She carried that burden despite her own commander’s insistence that she had
done the right thing.

  Vigor felt an echo of her concern. He had dragged Rachel into this adventure. Now she was in the hands of the Dragon Court. But he knew that guilt would do them no good. He had grown up with faith. It was the cornerstone of his being. He found some solace in placing his faith in Rachel’s safety into the hands of God—and Gray.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be proactive himself. God helps those who help themselves. He and Kat had their own duty here.

  Vigor answered her question. “The word ‘Gothic’ comes from the Greek word ‘goetic.’ Which translates to ‘magic.’ And such architecture was considered magical. It was like none seen at the time: the thin ribbing, the flying buttresses, the impossible heights. It gave an impression of weightlessness.”

  As Vigor stressed this last word, Kat understood. “Levitation,” she said.

  Vigor nodded. “The cathedrals and other Gothic structures were almost exclusively built by a group of masons who named themselves the Children of Solomon, a mix of Knights Templar and monks of the Cistercian Order. They retained the mathematical mysteries to build these structures, supposedly gained when the Knights Templar discovered the lost Temple of Solomon during the Crusades. The Knights grew rich…or rather richer, as it was said they had already discovered King Solomon’s vast treasure, possibly even the Ark of the Covenant, which was said to have been hidden at the Temple of Solomon.”

  “And supposedly the Ark is where Moses stored his pots of manna,” Kat said. “His recipe for m-state metals.”

  “Don’t discount that possibility,” Vigor said. “In the Bible, there are many references to strange powers emanating from the Ark. References to it levitating. Even the word levitate is derived from the caretakers of the Ark, the Levite priests. And the Ark was well known for being deadly, killing with bolts of light. One fellow, a carter named Uzzah, sought to stabilize the Ark when it tipped a bit. He touched it with his hand and was struck down. Scared poor King David enough that he at first refused to take the Ark into his city. But the Levite priests showed him how to approach it safely. With gloves, aprons, and divesting oneself of all metal objects.”

  “To keep from getting shocked.” Kat’s voice had lost some of its stiffness, the mystery drawing her out.

  “Maybe the Ark, with the m-state powders stored inside, acted like an electrical capacitor. The superconducting material absorbed ambient environmental energy and stored it like the gold pyramid had. Until someone mishandled it.”

  “And got electrocuted.”

  Vigor nodded.

  “Okay,” Kat said. “Let’s say these Knights Templar rediscovered the Ark and possibly these m-state superconductors. But can we know if they understood its secrets?”

  “I may have an answer. Commander Gray originally challenged me to trace historical references for these strange monatomic powders.”

  “From Egypt to the biblical Magi,” Kat said.

  Vigor nodded. “But I wondered if it stretched further. Past the age of Christ. Were there more clues left to find?”

  “And you found them,” Kat said, reading his excitement.

  “These m-state powders went by many names: white bread, the powder of projection, the Paradise Stone, the Magi Stone. To my surprise, looking forward from biblical times, I found another mysterious stone of alchemical history. The famous Philosopher’s Stone.”

  Kat frowned. “The stone that could turn lead into gold?”

  “That is a common misconception. A seventeenth-century philosopher, Eiranaeus Philalethes, a well-respected Royal Society Fellow, set the record straight in his treatises. To quote him, the Philosopher’s Stone was ‘nothing but gold digested to its highest degree of purity…called a stone by virtue of its fixed nature…gold, more pure than the purest…but its appearance is that of a very fine powder.’”

  “The gold powder again,” Kat said, surprised.

  “Can there be any clearer reference? And it wasn’t only Eiranaeus; a fifteenth-century French chemist, Nicolas Flamel, described a similar alchemical process with the final words, and I quote, ‘It made a fine powder of gold, which is the Philosopher’s Stone.’”

  Vigor took a breath. “So clearly some scientists at the time were experimenting with a strange form of gold. In fact, the entire Royal Society of scientists was fascinated by it. Including Sir Isaac Newton. Many don’t know that Newton was a fervent alchemist and also a colleague of Eiranaeus.”

  “Then what became of all their work?” Kat asked.

  “I don’t know. Many probably reached dead ends. But another colleague of Newton, Robert Boyle, also researched alchemical gold. But something disturbed him, something he discovered. He stopped his research and declared such studies dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that he said its misuse could ‘disorder the affairs of mankind, turning the world topsy-turvy.’ It makes one wonder what scared him. Could he have touched upon something that drove our lost alchemical society deep underground?”

  Kat shook her head. “But what does the Philosopher’s Stone have to do with Gothic architecture?”

  “More than you’d think. An early-twentieth-century Frenchman named Fulcanelli wrote a best-selling treatise titled Le Mystère des Cathédrales. It elaborated on how the Gothic cathedrals of Europe were coded with arcane messages, pointing to a vein of lost knowledge, including how to prepare the Philosopher’s Stone and other alchemical secrets.”

  “A code in stone?”

  “Don’t be surprised. It was what the Church was doing already. Most of the populace at the time was illiterate. The decorations of the cathedrals were both instructional and informative, biblical storytelling in stonework. And remember who I said built these massive Gothic story-books.”

  “The Knights Templar,” Kat said.

  “A group known to have gained secret knowledge from the Temple of Solomon. So perhaps, besides telling biblical stories, they incorporated some additional coded messages, meant for their fellow Masonic alchemists.”

  Kat wore a doubtful expression.

  “One only has to look closely at some of the Gothic artwork to raise an eyebrow or two. The iconography is full of zodiac symbols, mathematical riddles, geometric mazes right out of alchemical texts of the time. Even the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo, spent a whole chapter decrying how the artwork of Notre Dame was contrary to the Catholic Church. Describing its Gothic art as ‘seditious pages’ in stone.”

  Vigor pointed ahead, through the trees. The park ended as they neared the Palace Square. “And Fulcanelli and Hugo weren’t the only ones who believed something heretical was involved with the Knights Templar’s artwork. Do you know why Friday the thirteenth is considered unlucky?”

  Kat glanced to him and shook her head.

  “October 13, 1307. A Friday. The king of France, along with the pope, declared the Knights Templar to be heretics, sentencing them to death, and crucifying and burning their leader. It is well believed that the real reason the Knights were outlawed was to wrest power from them and gain control of their riches, including the secret knowledge they possessed. The king of France tortured thousands of Knights, but their storehouse of riches was never discovered. Still, it marked the end of the Knights Templar.”

  “Truly an unlucky day for them.”

  “The end of an unlucky century, really.” Vigor led the way out of the park and along the tree-lined street that led toward the center of town. “The division between the Church and the Knights started a hundred years earlier when Pope Innocent III brutally wiped out the Cathars, a sect of Gnostic Christians with ties to the Knights Templar. It was really a century-long war between orthodoxy and Gnostic belief.”

  “And we know who won that,” Kat said.

  “Do we? I’m wondering if it wasn’t so much a victory as an assimilation. If you can’t beat them, join them. An interesting paper turned up in September 2001, titled the Chinon Parchment. It was a scroll dated a year after that bloody Friday the thirteenth, signed by Pope
Clement V, absolving and exonerating the Knights Templar. Unfortunately, King Philippe of France ignored this and continued his country-wide massacre of the Knights. But why this change of heart by the Church? Why did Pope Clement build his Avignon palace here in the Gothic tradition, constructed by the same heretical masons? And why did Avignon become in fact the Gothic center of Europe?”

  “Are you suggesting the Church did an about-face and took the Knights into their fold?”

  “Remember how we’d already come to conclude that some aspects of the Thomas Christians, Christians of Gnostic leanings, were already hidden inside the Church. Perhaps they convinced Pope Clement to intervene to protect the Knights from King Philippe’s rampage.”

  “To what end?”

  “To hide something of great value—to the Church, to the world. During the century of the Avignon papacy, a great surge of building occurred here, much of it overseen by the Children of Solomon. They could have easily buried away something of considerable size.”

  “But where do we begin looking?” Kat said.

  “To the work commissioned by that wayward pope, built by the hands of the Knights, one of the largest masterworks of Gothic architecture.”

  Vigor waved forward, where the street emptied into a large square, populated by merrymakers from the festival. Colored lights framed a dancing area, a rock band on a makeshift stage pounded out a riff, and young people writhed, laughed, and yelled. Along the fringes, tables had been set up, crowded with more festival participants. A juggler tossed flaming brands into the night sky. Clapping encouraged him. Beer flowed, along with paper cups of coffee. Cigarette smoke billowed, along with special hand-rolled herbs.

  But backdropped against this party rose an immense, dark, and looming structure, framed by square towers, fronted by massive archways of stone, and set off by a pair of conical spires. Its stone face was a sober contrast to the merriment below. History weighed it down…and an ancient secret.

  The Palace of the Popes.